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Picking and choosing who to try and bully

Posted by Scott Tribe on August 16, 2011, at 8:13 am |

This happened yesterday, but I’ll still comment on it. You might have seen the story where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court took the unusual step of publicly (albeit indirectly) supporting the rebuke of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for his suggestion a few months back that judges weren’t being deferential enough to the Conservative government:

“I was certainly — and I think all judges were — very pleased when an issue arose earlier this year when a Minister of the Crown seemed to suggest that some judges were insufficiently solicitous to government policy. We were very, very gratified to see your president writing a powerful public letter to the minister in question, reminding the minister of the importance of public confidence in an impartial judiciary, that bases its decisions on the law and not on government policy.”

It’s not an everyday occurrence where a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court publicly speaks out to criticize a government minister, so you know how far overboard Kenney went. I found it interesting that he didn’t write a sarcastic response to her at his website, as he did with Amnesty International. He left his spokesperson to meekly state there was nothing wrong with having a discussion.

Bullies tend to pick on those they feel they have power over. In that sense, it was a bit surprising Kenny would go after judges as he did when he made his statement, but I doubt Kenney will choose to pursue this. After all, who knows when a case involving the federal government may come to the Supreme Court in the next four years.